


In the Prime of his Life

by Dawnwind



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Charlie's birthday, and naturally, calamity occurs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Prime of his Life

Albert Einstein's cheerful countenance beamed up at Charlie from the page-a-day calendar on his desk. He rejoiced at the return of Albert's smile once he'd picked up the pile of unread essays that had covered the calendar for two days, and deposited the unsteady stack onto a nearby chair.

Ah! There it was, the directions to the restaurant where Larry was meeting him. He knew he'd left it in the upper left hand corner, as he always did with important papers, tucked just under the calendar. Shoving the necessary paper into his pocket, he realized that he hadn't torn off a calendar page in two days.

Einstein's sweet smile with the caption _"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"_ was replaced with a picture of a cartoonish man about to vote but more interested in drooling over a huge sandwich.

 _"An empty stomach does not make a good political advisor,_ " Charlie read aloud with a chuckle. His own empty stomach was rumbling loudly, bringing up thoughts of French dip sandwiches, or being that it was dinner time, maybe a nice piece of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.

He tossed Monday's page into the round file and stared at the date on Tuesday, with sudden clarity. The whole reason Larry had invited him out -- it was his birthday. The last two weeks had been a mad dash between helping Don with a complicated kidnapping/extortion case, and trying to make a publishing deadline for a mathematics journal, along with the usual paper grading that went with being a professor. He'd forgotten, as had his father and brother unless they just had just neglected to mention any plans for celebrating the auspicious day. Don probably _had_ forgotten, that was a given. His father probably had something up his sleeve -- though just what remained to be seen.

His birthday. He was 31 -- how had that happened? Seemed like only yesterday he'd been 15 and starting college. Einstein's bon mot du jour even addressed the odd hiccups time could take.

_When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity._

Everything truly was relative, that was for sure. And if the clock on the wall was operating on Pacific standard time, as it should be, he would be late meeting Larry at Mama Murphy's Kosher Kitchen unless the he had the power to ride his bike faster than Lance Armstrong. Since Charlie had no hope of winning the Tour de France, he was resigned to being late.

Luckily, most of the bike-riding students had left campus for the day, leaving his blue steed alone in the rack. Seemed like most days when he was a hurry there were half a dozen other bicycles all entangled in one another like some abstract sculpture. Shoving his long hair under his helmet, Charlie tried fastening the buckle under his chin while simultaneously kicking up the kickstand and shoving off with his right foot. Naturally, nothing went as planned and he nearly ran into a tree. The problem was the buckle. Balancing the bike with one foot on the sidewalk, Charlie peered down at the plastic piece that was supposed to fit snugly into the other side of the buckle. The so-called 'male' half was cracked, one piece all but broken off. Must have happened the day before when he'd hit a pothole a block from his house and landed on the sidewalk with his luckily helmeted head. Still had a bit of a headache, but he hadn't really noticed the damage to the buckle until now.

Oh well, unless there was a bike-through helmet shop between here and Mama Murphy's, he'd just have to chance riding with the thing perched precariously on his head. Settling his backpack more securely on his shoulders, Charlie started off, making a mental list for Wednesday -- read the accumulated pile of papers covering half his desk, and buy a new bike helmet. Better yet, if his father asked him what he wanted for a birthday gift, he'd ask for a new helmet.

With a self-satisfied grin, Charlie was across the campus and out onto the main street quickly. Tuesday evening traffic wasn't bad at all, and once he made the necessary lefts and rights to get him onto Lassiter Street, he recognized where he was going. Mama Murphy's had once been a popular pizza joint called Paddy Murphy's. All in the family, perhaps? Except for the little matter of charges of tax evasion on the part of Paddy. The place had been dark for six months or so, but apparently Mama was using the space for some slightly more ethnic fare.

Just how much could a pizza restaurant make in a single night, and would avoiding paying whatever taxes the city of Pasadena and county of LA leveraged on business owners ever be feasible under such circumstances? Highly doubting that it would ever be an economically sound means of saving some cash, even if it weren't a Federal crime, Charlie computed the price of one pepperoni pizza -- say 8.50. Multiply that by what? He considered several known theories on estimating how many meals a restaurant needed to put out on a single night and nodded, the equation working itself out effortlessly in his mind's eye -- x times y for one day, multiply that by 30 for one month, times 12 for one year. Subtracting the cost of labor, and all the usual bills common in the 21st century -- electricity, not to mention internet, and advertising. Nope -- unless a pizza maker worked 24/7 and made pizzas constantly without stopping for sleep, just having a restaurant was not even a particularly money making scheme. Of course, what if he charged $12 a pie -- or even $20 the way some of the gourmet places did?

The sound of screeching brakes and a shouted expletive got Charlie's attention only seconds before a white van swerved into oncoming traffic, snarling traffic on his side of the street before veering straight at him. There was nowhere for him to go, he couldn't pedal any faster, and was trapped between the rapidly approaching van and the line of cars parked along the curb. Three car horns blared in raucous cacophony as he was computing the logistics of swinging the bike's front wheel to the right in hopes of jumping the curb by a fire hydrant.

The van slammed into his bike, dragging it sideways. Charlie tried desperately to hang on and avoid hitting the pavement but the momentum was too great. Like the cue ball spinning another ball into the side pocket, he careened off the van and into a parked Volvo, coming to rest in the gutter with one foot still tangled in the spokes of the bike wheel.

His last thought was that Einstein was trying to tell him something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Just like the last one." David Sinclair nodded, pointing to two agitated bank tellers standing just outside the doors of Pasadena Bank and Trust. "Two guys, another in a getaway vehicle parked in the parking lot, coming in just moments before closing time. Mickey number one went over to the front counter." He waved a hand at the white marble counter featuring two slots for the tellers, each now barricaded with small wooden shutters reminding Don of barn doors shut after a thief has already absconded with the horses.

"When the guard, Lenny Freeman, objected to Mickey number two pointing a gun at him, he went for his own piece, and Mickey shot him in the leg," David finished, rubbing his thigh as if in sympathy.

Don Eppes chewed gum for a moment, orienting himself to the exits and entrances visualizing the bank robbery, and analyzing what they knew of the robbers' movements even before he watched the video footage. "Two come in fast from the door facing the parking lot, wearing Mickey Mouse masks, one covers the guard, the other goes over to the teller and demands the take."

"Exactly like before, down to the old-fashioned set up of the bank with only two teller windows and no good sight lines between the doors and the teller desk. The pillars obscure the front door completely, and make it hard to see the side doors. The head teller..." he consulted his notes. "Mary Anne Brookman, said she never even noticed the two men come in."

"Anyone catch a license plate on the getaway car?" Don sighed. With only two known robberies under their belts, these guys were in no way a major crime spree, but jobs like this one gave him a headache. Too slick, too fast. They didn't get away with tons of cash, but they didn't have to. What was in the teller drawer on a midweek day was enough to keep a guy in beer and cable TV. With their faces obscured by masks, they couldn't be ID'd, and witnesses rarely looked past the cartoonish face to the eye color or possible visible hair color beneath.

"Mary Anne, always observant." David gave a wry lift of one eyebrow. "Said she heard a car noise after they left, but both tellers were told to sit down under the edge of the counter for five minutes." He pointed across at the elegant marble console that covered one half of the room. "The bank manager had already left for the day, but the loan specialist, Doug Murphy -- his desk is on the far wall closest to the parking lot -- ran for the door when they heard the car roar out of the lot. Says it was a white VW type van. License plate had an E and possibly more than one 2 in it."

"Well, that narrows it down considerably," Don said, with a dash of sarcasm thrown in to spice up the bad news. "Maybe the video will tell us more. Canvas the other shops on the street, see if anyone else saw the van go by?"

He and David ducked under the crime scene tape slung across the front of the bank and exited, both squinting in the brilliant September sun. Six thirty on a Tuesday, Don thought grumpily. Most working stiffs were just getting home to wife, kiddies, and a nice plate of pot roast. Did the modern working woman even make pot roast these days? He hadn't a clue. He would be lucky if he got take-out Chinese at his desk. Two robberies, exactly one week apart, and they still didn't have a complete license plate on the damned getaway van. The witnesses last week had also remembered twos plus an M, and the Mickey Mouse masks, but little else. How much was there to recall when the thieves stayed five minutes at each place?

"Colby's already on it," David said. "Once the security guy gives us the video we can go back to the office to watch some televised crime. You want to order in some subs?"

"I was more thinking about Chinese." Don bit on a gum bubble with his back teeth. That always made the most satisfying little crunchy pop. Used to bug the hell out of Charlie when they were kids.

"Don." Colby jaywalked across the street from the Starbucks on the opposite side. "Not much in the way of descriptions from any of the caffeine fans, but one couple -- Ed Lee and Jason Fong -- were just leaving the bank's ATM when they saw a couple of guys wearing Mickey Mouse masks run out the side door. Says they jumped into a white Toyota minivan."

"Now we have one vote for Toyota and another for Volkswagen," Don put on a pair of sunglasses against the low lying sun shining right in his eyes. "Anyone for Honda or maybe some good old American craftsmanship?"

"Think the consensus last week was Honda," David said.

"Maybe we're getting somewhere." Don felt the vibration of his cell phone against his hip, the modern man's mini massage. He flipped it out, automatically reading his father's ID on the screen. "Hey, Dad," he greeted.

"Witnesses said the license had an E in it, and a couple of twos," Colby continued. "Van went down one block and turned onto Lassiter Street."

Don barely registered the end of the report. The moment he heard his father's agitated voice, the rest of the noise around the bank faded to meaningless gibberish. "Slow down, slow down," Don insisted. "What happened to Charlie?" Both the other agents' eyes swiveled toward him when they heard the name of their friend.

 _"Your brother was hit by a car._ " Alan's voice sounded thin and high-pitched, not completely the fault of the phone's shoddy audio. Don swallowed against the suddenly rapid fire beating of his heart, and swallowed his gum in the process. "He was riding his bike," Alan said. "The ambulance is bringing him to Huntington Hospital right now."

"Dad, are you in your car?" Don asked, already walking toward his. He didn't wait for an answer, imaging the older man navigating through traffic one handed. "Then get off the phone. I'll be there in five minutes, we're right near Huntington."

 _"Don..."_ Alan started to say something, then stopped. _"Get there quickly. I think it could be bad."_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the many beneficial uses of an FBI badge was the way just flipping it in front of any obstacle -- usually some grim faced receptionist -- got Don access and information he might not have been privy to under normal circumstances. All he had to do was make it sound like Charlie was part of an investigation, and he had the woman guarding the Huntington Hospital ER practically ready to pull out confidential medical files for him. So much for the new HIPPA laws.

"Exam room four," she pointed. "A Charles Eppes was brought in just about half an hour ago."

"If an Alan Eppes arrives, can you tell him where I am?"

"You're all related?" she asked, suddenly suspicious again. "I thought this was an FBI thing."

"Nepotism shows up in the most unlikely places," Don threw over his shoulder, striding past a nurse wheeling a patient in a wheelchair and two others bent over a computer screen showing an x-ray. He was close enough to recognize the image of a broken leg but couldn't read the name and medical info printed in small letters at the bottom. He gave up a hope that it wasn't Charlie's.

"May I ask who you are looking for?" A tiny Asian woman, who missed five feet by two or three inches, barred the door to exam room four. "Visitors are supposed to wait outside."

"Charles Eppes was brought in by ambulance, a MVA?" Don flashed the badge again, using the cop vernacular for motor vehicle accident.

"Just because you're a Fed doesn't give you free rein to wander around the place." She had her hands on her hips, and although he could probably lift her up with one hand, Don wasn't about to piss off the dynamo. "Did Marcia let you in? The woman doesn't have the brains of a gerbil."

"He's my brother," Don admitted, that fluttery churning in his belly a distraction that he rarely had when the patient was some victim of a trauma he was investigating in his role as an agent. He wasn't used to having to deal with the brother aspect. His need to know how badly Charlie was hurt made him anxious and abrupt. "He works with me and could have some knowledge of an on-going case."

The woman, her square little chin about even with his belly button, stared up at Don for a moment. "You can go in, but stay out of the medical team's way."

"Thank you, uh..." Don put out a hand, scanning her clothes for a name tag or some form of ID to show who she was.

"Dr, Quok, head of the ER." She smiled, her eyes softening with compassion. She shook his hand with a firm, competent grip. "But next time, don't lie to my ward clerk."

"Yes, ma'am." He nearly saluted. "My father..."

"I'll make sure he gets to see Charles," she agreed, pushing open the door.

Don stood just inside, forcing himself to slow down and take in the scene, just as he always did when walking into unknown territory. Rushing up and demanding to know the nature of Charlie's injuries, and therefore disrupting the doctors, wouldn't do his brother any good.

Charlie lay on the gurney, dark curls tangled around his pale face. An oxygen mask covered his mouth, and there was blood from a gash on his chin and another over his right eye. Three nurses and a doctor, not counting Dr. Quok, were working efficiently, putting in IVs, listening to his heart and lungs, and accessing an obviously broken arm, all the while barking out complicated medicalese that Don only partially understood.

"Can you give me an overview, Dr. Marsala?" Quok asked.

"We haven't gotten x-rays yet, but looks like a concussion, probably cracked or broken ribs, broken radius -- possibly the ulna, too, and a whole bunch of lacs and abrasions," the tall man wearing scrubs printed with cowboys answered, never stopping from his work.

"Did he wake up?" Don asked, unnerved by Charlie's lack of movement. Charlie was rarely still. If he wasn't waving his hands in the air describing some obscure mathematical theorem, he was bouncing on his toes, restless to move onto some new topic while the rest of the world was simply trying to catch up with his quicksilver brain.

"He reacts to negative stimuli and grimaced when Shaniqua inserted one of the IVs, but so far he hasn't regained consciousness," reported one of the nurses. When the phone rang, she slipped the receiver between shoulder and ear, continuing to record vital signs on the notes. "X-ray is ready for him," she said to Marsala, and in a matter of seconds the other two nurses had trundled the gurney and IV poles out the door.

"Donnie?" Alan spoke from behind him. Don turned to see his father. Alan's eyes followed the gurney onto the elevator as if he'd never see his youngest son again.

"Dad, he's..." Don started to give the glib, almost meaningless stock phrase "he'll be all right," and then stopped himself. Charlie's injuries hadn't sounded all that dire to him, but then, what did he know? He had zero medical expertise, and only the barest first-aid training. He'd learned how to tie a tourniquet in Boy Scouts, and use a snake bite kit, none of which gave him enough knowledge to proclaim Charlie all right. "They're taking him up to x-ray -- looks like he has a broken arm. What the hell happened?"

"I didn't get much, but the officer I spoke to said he was riding his bike and got hit by a car." Alan spoke distractedly, still focused on the now closed elevator.

"Damn," Don swore softly, and this time his father's dark eyes looked directly at him in rebuke for using language his mother wouldn't have approved of.

"Mr. Eppes?" The nurse Don had seen recording vital signs laid a comforting arm on his. "I'm Amelia. If you and your father want to go back in the waiting room, I'll come get you when we have more news after the x-rays. Shouldn't take more than half an hour or so."

"Thanks." Don led his father back to the ubiquitous banks of plastic chairs that filled the waiting room. Apparently Tuesday evenings weren't busy nights for the ER. The only other person in the large room was a skinny teenaged girl who stared glumly at _Jeopardy_ on the TV as if she had nowhere else to go. Judging from her ragged clothes and dirty shoes, she probably didn't.

Time passed slowly, as it always did in the strange otherworldly manner of things when a traumatic event completely disrupts the normal flow of events. Don had expected to be holed up in a vacant room back at the bureau, going over boring video camera surveillance tapes with David, arguing over who got the last spring roll and reading each other's fortune cookies without getting much -- if anything -- useful about the Mickey Mouse robbers. His father had probably planned on dinner with Charlie, and maybe bridge or canasta with some of his buddies. That is, unless Charlie had been immersed in some mathematical equation that kept him at Cal Sci all evening.

"Where was Charlie going?" Don asked at last, after a foray for bad vending machine coffee had used up some of the empty minutes. How long was this x-ray supposed to take? Well, multiple x-rays, no doubt.

"Uh -- he was going to dinner with Larry. You know, for his birthday."

"Damn." This time it came out too loudly, and Don immediately bit his lip, chastised by his father's grim expression. Charlie's 31st had totally slipped his mind.

"You forgot?"

"Didn't you? Uh, we were going to have a party on Saturday, right?"

"A surprise party, for his prime. With prime rib," Alan said, something not quite normal in the way he played out the words. Something broken and fearful that made the fluttery feeling in Don's belly return with a vengeance. He'd rarely seen his father this scared.

Amelia came through the ER door, her expression apologetic. "Sorry it's been taking so long, but the doctors decided that Charles needed a CAT scan after they reviewed the x-rays."

"What part did they need extra pictures of?" Alan asked, gripping Don's upper arm just a shade too tightly.

"I don't know, but Dr. Marsala will fill you in completely when they have all the information." She nodded, her report finished, and stood for a moment longer as if waiting for further questions.

"Thanks." Don remembered his manners belatedly, but she had already trotted back into the emergency department, going on to another sick patient. Never any shortage of those.

CAT scan. Surely an x-ray would reveal all that was needed to know about a simple break of the radius or ulna. Don had broken both his arms in 36 years of life. Both times playing baseball. Once in Little League, once playing high school ball. Painful, annoying to wear a cast for 4 to 6 weeks, but usually easily healed. Usually.

For that matter, he suddenly remembered that Charlie had broken an arm, too. Around age 6 or 7, maybe? He'd climbed a tree to determine if the Golden Mean really was found in all manner of growing things, and toppled out, snapping his right arm. A Coley's fracture the pediatrician had said; from landing with one hand out to break the fall. These things happen -- would you like a green cast or a blue one, Charlie?

Odd what a person remembers under stress. Don could so clearly see Charlie, right arm brightly casted in the awkward angle necessary for a Coley's fracture, scribbling wobbly numbers on a pad with his left hand. He'd been so grumpy because he couldn't read his own handwriting that summer. As if anyone else could the rest of the time.

So -- the CAT scan probably wasn't for his arm. Maybe the ribs were damaged more severely than first realized? Maybe there was internal injuries to contend with? Or something else?

Don flashed on the gash over his brother's eye. Maybe the scan was for his skull? The mere idea took his breath away. Charlie with injuries to his head, to his brain. Incomprehensible to imagine Charlie with possible brain damage. He hadn't regained consciousness -- it didn't take a brain surgeon to know that was a bad sign. Wasn't he wearing a bike helmet?

"You remember all of us sitting around the dinner table -- that time Amita brought over real Indian food -- and teasing Charlie about organ donation?" Alan's voice had an odd cadence, as if he couldn't quite breathe and speak at the same time.

"Yeah, dad, I do." Don looked over at the game show on the TV, anywhere but his father's haunted face.

"I don't want Charlie's brain to go to a museum..." He slid off, the sound of tears coloring his tone before the usual Alan Eppes fortitude kicked in and he was back to himself again, gruff and dryly sarcastic. "I have always wanted to look inside his brain, though. Figure out what made Charlie tick. I think I'll ask for a copy."

Odd that his father had latched onto exactly the same thing that he'd been thinking. Charlie's amazing, one-of-a-kind brain. How long would that take, and would the doctors come out right away to give them news? Don had had CAT scans before, they were loud and claustrophobic, but he guessed since Charlie was unconscious, that would not be a problem in this case.

"Having a child like Charlie was scary. I'm an engineer. I knew integers, quadratic equations and Euclidian geometry, but he'd passed me by when he was 8 years old."

"He passed me by when he was six," Don said softly, remembering a gap toothed Charlie dressed in footie pajamas correcting his fifth grade math homework.

"Your mother and I, we both wanted to start a family when we got married." Alan smiled, a wistful thing, full of memories and promises made nearly forty years ago. "But not right away -- it was 1968, life was so exciting. We were having a great time..."

"The summer of love, Haight Ashbury and all that?" Don tried to picture his parents wearing love beads and tie-dyed shirts.

"That was the summer of '66, history boy," Alan scoffed gently. "No, we weren't into free love and drugs. But the music, the Democratic convention in Chicago. There were good times and bad." He paused, shifting his weight in the uncomfortable chair. "When your mother got pregnant with you we saw where our lives were headed. You were unplanned, my boy, but not unwanted, so we settled down..."

"Got fuddy-duddy."

"Not exactly," Alan humphed. "Margaret loved being pregnant, said it made her felt like an earth mother, and we wanted you to have brothers and sisters. A whole big family."

"A whole baseball team." Don couldn't quite concentrate on Alan's rambling. Where was he going with all this? Alan didn't usually bring up ancient history, but Charlie's accident had affected them both deeply in ways he hadn't expected.

"We tried for years. Margaret could get pregnant, but she'd miscarry. First time in '71." He sighed, just once, for that loss. "And again when you were two, and twice the next year. We'd begun to despair at that point that another baby was never meant to be. The fourth time -- you would have been three and a half, I think, she started to show. Thought we'd made it that time. A little girl -- born at just over six months along."

"Dad, I never knew," Don said softly, but now he understood. Charlie had been the prize at the end of the heartbreak. And at the age of 31, only three decades later, he was perilously close to death.

"We didn't want to dwell in the past, and we never took any pictures of her." Alan held out his hand, the fingers blunt and strong, a man's hand. "She was impossibly small. Fit in my hand with room to spare." He gazed down at his palm, seeing that tiny being born decades earlier. "The doctors let us hold her, said she'd die right away, but she hung on. Maybe most of the day, I can't remember any longer."

"I've seen babies that small." Don nodded. "One of agents I worked with in New Mexico, his wife had a preemie, in the intensive care nursery, on a ventilator. Looked like a little alien."

"Isabelle Rose looked... perfect. Tiny but perfect. She had ten fingers and toes. We counted them, just like you do with any baby. Miniscule finger nails, the size of grains of sand. She cried, a kitten's cry, until Margaret tucked her up to her breast and just held her. A lifetime in six hours."

Isabelle for his paternal Grandmother, and Rose for Grandma Mann. What would she have looked like now? She would have been 33 years old. With a pang, Don intensely missed the younger sister he had never seen and never known.

"That's what it feels like right now. Charlie can't be 31 today. It doesn't seem like six whole hours have passed since he was born -- three weeks before his due date, but healthy and screaming. Nursed right away. Your mother said he bit her." This time Alan's voice fractured, like a cracked cup breaks in half when hot coffee is poured in. He didn't cry, not Alan Eppes, but the pain on his face was so terrible Don had to move away or he'd be consumed.

That's when Dr. Marsala walked through the doors.

"The Eppes family?" he asked. Marsala obviously hadn't paid the slightest attention to Don previously, because he gave no sign of recognition. He escorted them back into what was barely even an alcove, more like a wide place in the hall where two chairs had been pulled up cart crammed with drawers and a computer terminal perched on the top. "The patient..."

"Charlie, my son," Alan said with quiet authority. Don glanced at his father; the man he knew so well was back, determined, strong, and sure of himself. The frightened dad had retreated to whatever place he usually stayed, watching anxiously as whatever disasters befell his children.

"Charlie," Marsala repeated, typing a sequence onto the keyboard. A series of pictures came up that looked like some sort of weirdly shaped melon that had been sliced through the middle so that the inside showed. Each picture was slightly different shape, growing larger with each image. The CAT scan. "Has a hairline skull fracture, which is why we needed to get the scan. Had there been excessive damage, I would have opted for an MRI as well, but I don't think that is warranted at this time."

Get on with it, Don thought with irritation. Leading with the bad news was never a good ploy. Obviously the doctor's skills didn't include doling out information to the family of the patient.

"So what exactly does that mean?" Alan asked in the voice that Don used to hear when he was trying to get out of doing an assigned chore and his father knew it.

"Fortunately, there was minimal bleeding from the vessels surrounding the brain, and as far as we can ascertain at this time, no damage to the brain."

Okay, giving the good news in a round about way must be the guy's style. Don let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"And -- Charlie." Marsala remembered the name after a beat. "Regained consciousness abruptly during the scan, so we had to lightly sedate him to finish, but he is oriented times three."

"Name, time and place," Don interpreted for his father, not sure why he knew that, just that he did.

"That's good," Alan said with just the hint of a question lingering.

"Very good," the doctor agreed. "His arm will be casted in the next hour, and he'll have to stay overnight for observation, but I don't foresee any complications."

"So we can take him home in the morning?" Alan asked.

"Once he's transferred up to the third floor, you'll have to ask the attending there. I only work in the ER." Marsala glanced at his watch, a busy man. Obviously too busy to stand around chatting aimlessly with the family of a patient.

As if on cue, Amelia popped her head out of the trauma room, gesturing to the Eppeses. "He's awake, and asking for you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Charlie fussed with the nasal cannula poking his nostrils, and got a tsk-tsk from the nurse taking his blood pressure for the umpteenth time. He had the vague idea that he should be more precise -- know how many times she'd done the mundane task, but his head hurt far too much for such deep thought. Usually he calculated everything into its mathematical equivalent, but dizziness, nausea and the worst headache of his entire life canceled out the need for numbers. Strange, he'd never imagined anything would do that.

"Charlie?" Alan came through the exam room door, stopped for a moment to look him over, and crossed the floor in two giant steps to enfold his son in a hug.

"Dad!" Charlie stifled the urge to blubber all over his father's clean shirt, wincing when the embrace jostled his splinted arm. "I-I'm okay."

"Scared ten years off me, young man, and at my age, that's not a good thing." Alan bent to examine the various monitors and machines Charlie was still hooked up to.

"Hey, bro. Still think falling off your bike impresses the ladies?" Don teased, going for a lighter vein.

Charlie appreciated his brother's discretion. No need to bring up that he'd nearly bought the big one. The Eppes family motto was deal with the present and move forward. No dwelling on what could have been.

"Hey," he greeted, and had an immediate flash of Albert Einstein's smiling face blinking insistently at him. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the annoying image wouldn't vanish. Something he had to tell Don? Why would Einstein remind him of Don?

"Charlie, do you need something?" Alan asked, sounding worried.

Opening his eyes, Charlie grimaced, his father looked worried. Not a good sign. Unless he proved he was fine, Alan would fuss over him until he couldn't feed himself without unwanted help. "My head hurts," Charlie said. "Hard to think straight. It'll be better tomorrow."

"Tell me what happened," Don said quietly, turning into the competent agent. "You were hit by a car?"

"A van." Charlie closed his eyes again. Really, this ER was far too bright. Since he was lying down, the overhead lights shone right into his eyes. "White van. I was riding to meet Larry for dinner, and the van came over from the other direction." He had to stop, sweat beading his forehead, suddenly scared. It was like there was nothing else past that point. He could remember seeing the white van bearing down on him. He'd been distracted, and only saw it at the last moment when there was no time to get out of the way. And then nothing, a big blank stretch of time. "What time is it?"

"Eight thirty," Amelia supplied, putting out supplies for the doctor who would cast the broken arm.

"Two hours." Charlie swallowed against the nausea. He refused to throw up in front of an audience, but it was a near thing. "Where's Larry?"

"Larry?" Alan smacked his own forehead. "I didn't even think about him. Where is he?"

"Knowing Larry, he had whatever white food the restaurant served while waiting for you, and lost track of time," Don suggested, snagging a chair so that their father could sit down next to the gurney Charlie was lying on. "What was the name of the place?"

"Mama's? Kosher Mama's?" Charlie said after a moment of trying to come up with the name. He'd never had such trouble thinking. Usually his brain calculated so swiftly that he knew the answer to most questions seconds after they were asked. With a skull fracture he felt like an early '90s version of a computer with an external modem in the world of digital high speed. Slow as a turtle.

"Where is that?" Don asked, overly persistent from Charlie's point of view.

And again Albert Einstein nudged him, reminding him that he hadn't given all the pertinent facts. "Relativity," Charlie said, perplexed.

"What?" Alan laid the back of his hand on his younger son's forehead, far too close to the recently bandaged gash. "Do you have a fever?"

"Dad!" Charlie pulled away from the fatherly concern and regretted it immediately. It felt like a bomb inside his head had detonated, setting off strobbing yellow supernovas in front of his eyes. "My head hurts!" he snapped, getting an extra set of vitals done for his outburst.

The nurse clucked her tongue sympathetically. "I'll give you something for the pain. Your blood pressure is up."

"Can he have pain killers with a skull fracture?" Alan worried.

Don rolled his eyes in Charlie's direction, which would have been funny if Charlie weren't feeling so wretched. He wanted to laugh, but didn't dare.

"We deal with head trauma every day," Amelia reminded sweetly, and smiled even more widely when a blond haired man in scrubs arrived. "Why don't you two go wait in the waiting room while Dr. Butler puts on the cast?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm concerned. Charlie seems so distracted," Alan commented, sitting back down in the molded chairs of the waiting room.

"Charlie's always distracted about something or other," Don countered. "Dad, his brain got scrambled, but he knew who we were and even remembered part of the accident. Frankly, that's impressive. I didn't know my first name..." Realizing he'd revealed too much information, Don stopped, but his father had already latched onto that tantalizing tidbit.

"When did you crack your skull?" Alan demanded.

"New Mexico," Don confessed, since he was the one who'd brought it up. "I was following a suspect who'd booby trapped his house. My partner went left into a room and I went right -- and the suspect clocked me with a cuckoo clock. Had a headache for two weeks." He folded a stick of gum, tucking it into his cheek. "Which is why I know Charlie's gonna feel like shit for a while -- maybe even as long as he has the cast on his arm, and then be back to the annoying little know-it-all he always was."

"Know-it-all," Alan tossed back, but seemed mollified by the information. "Did you have a CAT scan, too?"

"Yes." Don tried diverting his father's bulldog tendencies onto a different subject. "Hey, you have Larry's cell phone number? Maybe we should call him."

"Larry doesn't have a cell phone."

"I'm beginning to think I should put aside my prejudices toward cellular communications and invest in a mobile telephone." A small, very rumpled man came in through the main hospital doors, rubbing one cheek as if his skin were malleable as Play-Doh. "How is Charles?"

"Larry, how are you?" Alan shook his friend's hand. "Were you waiting at the restaurant all this time?"

"I had a small gift to commemorate Charles' natal day." Larry held up a wrapped book. "The collected works of Feynman. I waited for over an hour, and in desperation, since I couldn't get a hold of you on the phone the proprietress so kindly allowed me to use, I called Megan at the bureau office, anticipating that I'd be speaking with Don." His little smile indicated that he'd enjoyed speaking with Megan. He and Agent Reeves had an odd -- at least to Don -- on again, off again relationship that seemed to hover between very good friends and dating. "She told me that you'd been summoned to the hospital. So, how is Charles?"

"Charlie's better than expected," Don said, banishing his lingering worries over his brother's injuries to the nightmare file where he knew they'd stay for a few months. "Cracked his skull, broke an arm, but he's alive, and talking numbers already."

"That is positive news!" Larry grinned. "What exactly happened?"

"We don't really know," Alan said. "Except that he was hit by a car."

Don's phone buzzed his back pocket and he moved away to take the call. "Hey," he greeted, hearing David's voice on the other end. "Any news?"

"Nothing fit to report," David answered. "Colby and a couple of other guys canvassed all the way down Fisher Avenue and onto Lassiter because several witnesses said that a white Toyota van swerved onto Lassiter going over the limit."

"A white van," Don repeated, the tightening in his chest taking him by surprise. "David, hold on a second." Cupping the receiver, Don joined his father and Larry who had gone off on a tangent and were discussing random cosmic events instead of Charlie's accident. No surprise there, conversations with Larry often veered from the mundane to the sublime and back again like a comet streaking through uncharted space. "Larry, what street was the restaurant on?"

"Mama Murphy's Kosher Kitchen? On Lassiter, where the old Paddy Murphy's used to be." Larry tucked the wrapped book under his arm, looking around as if he'd only just then realized he was in an ER waiting room.

"Damn," Don swore softly. Charlie had been, in all probability, hit by the getaway van. What the heck were the odds on that? He didn't even want to know. He put the phone to his ear. "David, I may have a lead -- let me get back to you in a few hours."

"Sure. Hey, how's Charlie doing? Half the bureau's asking about the kid."

"Broken arm, cracked noggin, he'll survive," Don summarized. "I'll tell him you asked."

"I'll send him over a bent coat hanger for when his arm starts to itch," David said. "Boy, do I remember that misery."

"How were the video tapes from the bank?"

"Boring and grainy. They need to update their system in the worst way, but we may have some side views that show decent ear shape to compare, and skin color."

"Good job. Get someone going through the computer face recognition program pronto."

"Already done," David replied, and Don could hear the grin in his voice. He also saw the nurse walk through the ER doors to speak to Alan.

"Got to go, David." He flipped the small phone shut, eager to talk to his brother once again. Charlie had an amazing capacity to memorize numbers; he usually retained every single digit he ever saw. Was it possible he caught the license plate but was still too concussed to remember?

"Charlie is going up to room 409 right now." Amelia pointed to a bank of elevators on the right side of the admissions desk. "You can take those up to the fourth floor and meet him there."

"A prime number." Larry smiled. "Charles will appreciate that on this of all days."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ride through the halls while flat on his back and the abrupt transfer from narrow gurney to lumpy, uncomfortable hospital bed had done nothing to quell Charlie's nausea. He waited patiently while the new nurse, Hannah, a stout woman of indeterminate age with the demeanor of a Marine drill sergeant, took yet another set of vitals, adjusted his IV fluids and pulled the blankets so tight across the bed that his toes curled under, hoping the entire time that she would just go away and leave him in peace.

"This medication will help with the nausea," Hannah said, screwing a syringe onto the med port in the IV tubing. "And it will make you sleepy. I'll be coming in all night to check on your neuro status, so don't get too comfortable."

"I don't think that's possible," Charlie sighed, trying to move his freshly casted arm without jostling it too much.

Hannah swiftly tucked a pillow underneath, twitching it in such a way that suddenly his arm seemed to be positioned just right.

"Thanks," Charlie said in wonderment. And even more wonderful, whatever she'd put in his IV worked swiftly because the queasiness in his stomach was easing up.

Amazingly, Hannah winked at him, and her black eyes sparkled. "I've been doing this a long time, junior," she said, guiding the digital thermometer on wheels out the door for the next patient.

Charlie closed his eyes, craving quiet to sooth his scattered wits. He let his mind wander, but his head hurt, and even whole numbers seemed to dance just beyond his comprehension. Once again, Einstein's infuriatingly cheery face popped up, looking maddeningly smug. He morphed into Yoda, the Jedi master with the great man's eyes, riding in a spaceship bound for a distant planet.

"Relativity," Charlie said aloud, wincing at the effort it took to come up with the famous equation. Man, he was really losing his grasp on reality. How was he going to teach his classes with the Earth, Wind and Fire playing their greatest hits at full volume in his head? And he'd never even liked 'Shining Star.'

The question is, why did he keep looping back to the relationship between energy and mass? What did it have to do with a broken skull and a displaced wrist bone?

"Charles!" Larry burst through the door, bringing Charlie back to the present with a jarring thud. He rubbed his aching forehead and almost laughed when Larry absently mimicked him.

"Oh dear, I knew something dire had befallen you when you never arrived for our dinner." Larry massaged his right temple with one hand and nearly smacked himself in the head with a package when he brought his other hand up to do the same on the left. "Oh, the gift!" he exclaimed, handing over the brightly wrapped book.

"At least someone remembered my birthday," Charlie said, directing this at his father and brother as they piled into the tiny room.

"Yeah, well, you just wait..." Don shook his finger with older brother superiority. "We had plans -- lots of them."

"Really?" Charlie perked up, turning the gift over in his hands. The paper was printed with cartoon versions of Einstein wearing a birthday hat and tooting on a little blue horn. Streamers spelled out 'Birthdays are all relative' above his head. Charlie wondered if he was having some sort of hysterical reaction. Did a skull fracture normally cause a person to see Einstein? His head hurt too much to ponder the oddities of his hallucinations.

"Yes, my baby boy," Alan kissed him on the cheek, a rare show of paternal affection. "We can postpone the party that I'd planned for Saturday to another day."

"No way." Charlie shook his head too fast and had to grab the bed railing until the room stopped spinning. "My 31st on the 9th? Now that's prime." He grinned weakly at his math joke. He'd never thought that Alan and Don would really forget his birthday. "I'll be more than ready for a party by then."

"Except no beer for you," Don reminded. "And I already bought a case of Heineken."

"I will leave you then to recuperate," Larry said, waving. "I have some late night star gazing to do. Uranus will be at opposition to the sun tonight. Exquisite sight."

"Have fun, Larry!" Alan called.

"Bye, Larry." Charlie awkwardly unwrapped his new book one handed, dropping ribbon over the side of the bed. He bent his neck to examine the contents, but the fine print just blurred and squiggled in front of his eyes. Regretfully placing the book on the nightstand, Charlie wondered if it was possible to ask his family to get out and let him suffer alone.

Probably not. Alan appeared to be getting cozy in the bedside chair. Don was fiddling with the TV remote, and settled on a baseball game with the sound turned down. They were both planning on staying. This was not an equation that made any logical sense. They had their own beds to sleep in, and they should go home.

"Well, happy birthday to me," Charlie sing-songed.

"I'm just relieved you're alive to celebrate." Alan cleared his throat gruffly as if he were about to say more, but didn't. "How did it happen that you weren't wearing a helmet?"

"I was!" Charlie retorted, looking over at his brother for moral support. There was none from that corner, Don had his eye on a long shot of a baseball arching out of the park into the San Francisco Bay.

"If you had been, you wouldn't have a skull fracture," Alan said archly.

"The strap was broken," Charlie muttered, jutting out his chin in a futile show of defiance. "I was going to ask you for a new one, for my birthday."

"Of all the fool hardy things to do!" Alan exclaimed, coming out of his chair in outrage. "Riding your bicycle in traffic without a..."

"Dad." Don finally came to Charlie's rescue. "What's done is done." He dropped his hand lightly on his father's shoulder, a caress in Don Eppes terms. "I never got any dinner, did you?"

"I was in the middle of making some..." he trailed off, looking suddenly very tired and much older. "Some pasta, I can't even remember now." Alan shrugged, the unfinished dish no longer important.

"We're both hungry." Don rubbed his flat belly, rumpling his shirt. "Think that nurse would let us bring up some food?"

"Cafeteria's not open this late," Alan said. "There are some vending machines."

It took Charlie a few minutes to figure out why his father knew this so readily, and then it hit him. Alan must know this hospital like the back of his hand, having spent months here when Margaret was dying. Months when Charlie had barely left the house, much less come to see his sick mother in the hospital. Guilt washed over him for bringing his father back to this place of memories.

Dad, I'm sorr..." he started, but Don shook his head. Now was not the time.

"Charlie, you want anything?" Don asked with a look that told Charlie he simply needed to get Alan out of the room.

The thought of eating was repulsive. "No." Charlie swallowed back sudden nausea. "You know, you two should just go home. I mean it, I'm only going to get woken up every two hours anyway. Won't be any fun."

"Of course I'm staying!" Alan snapped as if the very idea of leaving was ridiculous.

"Then you should have some food," Don insisted. "Maybe go across the street to that fast food place? They serve until 2 am."

"A man of my age does not eat grease and saturated fats after nine o'clock in the evening," Alan said with dignity. "I'll call the pizza parlor Margaret loved. They deliver to the hospital and she used to..." He cleared his throat again, with a sad shake of his head. "Sometimes I could get her to eat a slice."

"Sounds good," Don agreed quietly. "If Charlie doesn't want any, we can always give the rest to the nurses. They always appreciate extra food."

"Vegetarian or pepperoni?" Alan asked absently, standing.

"Pepperoni," Charlie answered automatically, then remembered that he wasn't going to eat any. "Whatever you guys want."

"I think Chuckie is finding his appetite again," Don grinned at him. Charlie had the childish urge to stick his tongue out at his brother for the dreaded nickname but the grin brightened his mood, so he didn't.

"Dad, you can't use your cell phone in the patient rooms. Have to go down to the waiting area," Don said, proving that he was orchestrating the plan to get their father out for a while.

"I'll be back," Alan intoned in a bad imitation of Schwarzenegger's guttural accent.

Charlie rubbed lightly around the bandage on his forehead, scratching along his hairline. There was dried blood in his hair. Wonderful. His head felt heavy as lead and really wobbly on his neck. He so wanted to go to sleep. "So why'd you want Dad out of the room?"

"I need to talk to you about the accident." Don sat down in the chair Alan had just vacated.

"I told you, I can't remember it," Charlie said irritably. He really, really wanted them both to leave him alone. "I can't even remember the name of restaurant. There's a rock crusher in my head."

"Charlie, you've sat in on witness interviews. Start at the beginning, give me your impression."

When Don was in his FBI mode, he was calm, quiet and serious. There was no way Charlie was going to get out of doing this right now. He closed his eyes wearily, minutely shifting his broken arm in the vain hope that there was some comfortable position. There wasn't. "I was riding my bike--"

"When did you discover the strap on the bike helmet was broken?" Don took him back further.

"At Cal Sci. When I put it on," Charlie groaned, bile rising in his throat trying to think about those lost moments. "Don, my head hurts! Can't this wait?" Behind his eyelids Einstein popped up, holding something in his hands and winking at Charlie.

"Charlie, you may have been hit by a vehicle involved in a bank robbery. I need to know as much of what you can remember as possible, so I can catch these guys."

Opening his eyes to banish Einstein, Charlie scrutinized his brother's face. Don wouldn't lie about something like that. "What kind of vehicle?" The whole memory of the accident was like a big blurry blob in the middle of his usually orderly brain.

"You're the witness here, bro," Don tapped his cast gently. "You tell me."

Concentrating on the numbers was always far easier for Charlie than actual events. He could associate many pleasant memories by recalling the equations he was working on, or whatever numerical sequences he discovered at the time. "Paddy Murphy's went under because of tax evasion. I calculated a..." He winced, a huge vice was compressing his whole skull. "I wasn't paying attention to traffic on the road... I looked up and saw a white van." Charlie pressed one hand over his mouth, sure he was going to heave.

"Take it slow," Don encouraged, handing him a cup with a straw poking out.

A little sip of water helped the nausea, but Einstein was back in his mind's eye, waving three letters up above his head like cheerleaders did at football games. "E=MC squared." Charlie translated to himself.

"What?"

Apparently he'd spoken aloud without realizing. Charlie repeated the mathematical sentence for relativity. What the heck did that have to do with being hit by a white van? Usually things like that came so easily to him. Numbers were logic. They explained the universe, every living thing on Earth. So why couldn't they explain this?

On any other day, if this had happened to someone else, Charlie could have gone out to the scene of the accident. He'd measure and triangulate, figure out the dimensions and trajectories, and conclude exactly how and where the two objects had collided. He'd almost see the van bearing down on the bike simply from those numbers.

Numbers.

"That's the license plate," Charlie said firmly, seeing it so clearly he could feel the hot metal of the van and hear the crunch when it hit his bike, throwing him into the parked cars. Pain stabbed through his head like knife-sharp shards of glass. "Oh, no. Don..." That time he did puke, onto the ugly green blanket covering his legs.

"Hey," Don said softly, rubbing his back. He bundled up the soiled coverlet, dumping it in the laundry bin, giving Charlie time to pull himself together.

For that, Charlie was grateful. He hadn't vomited in years and his mouth tasted vile. He took a couple of tentative sips of water to wash his mouth out, closing his eyes because the walls and furniture were making slow revolutions around him

"E=MC squared was the license plate?" Don asked as if nothing had happened.

"No," Charlie lay back on the pillows, exhausted. Just looking over at the TV set was sick making. He flicked the remote button to turn off the game. "Not the actual equation. 2-E-M-C-2- 2-2."

"Two, Echo Michael Charlie, two, twenty two?" Don verified with a grimly satisfied smile.

"Yeah," Charlie said, fatigue pulling him under. He heard the door open and struggled to open his eyes again. If that nurse was going to ask him who was the president and what year it was again, he had to be prepared.

"What were you two doing while my back was turned?" Alan demanded in his 'I'm your father' voice.

"Charlie was helping me solve a bank robbery from his hospital bed," Don gave his brother's tangled curls a careful tug. "Thanks, Charlie. I've got to go make a phone call."

"The pizza will be here in..." Alan called, but Charlie didn't hear anything more. He finally got what he wanted; sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Trust Charlie to remember the numbers," Don said as he finished recounting how the FBI had tracked down a pair of unexpectedly successful bank robbers less than an hour after they'd run the license plate number through the DMV database.

"He does seem to have a flare for that," Alan said dryly, handing out tall glasses of iced tea.

"I am right here in the room," Charlie grumped from his place on the couch, although, he was thrilled to be home after 24 hours in the hospital. He could sleep in his own bed without constant interruptions from nurses and the sound of 'Code Blue' resounding from the overhead paging system. His head still hurt too much to even attempt the mental mathematical tricks he typically used to while away a quiet hour, but at least he was alive to be frustrated about it. "So, I solved a case even with a skull fracture, huh?"

"You helped," Don took a swipe at him but deliberately missed by a mile. "And even without a blackboard and chalk."

"Maybe if that catches on, you could clear some of those blackboards out of the garage," Alan suggested. "I could use the storage space. And Donnie, stop hitting your brother."

Charlie held up his cast to fend off the blow, laughing. "How much money did you retrieve from the Mickey Mouse caper?"

"They'd spent some of the fourteen thousand from the first bank. Looks like they bought themselves a computer and a plasma screen TV but we got back all twenty two thousand from the second," Don said proudly. "Three frat brothers -- all engineering students. Apparently when their scholarships fell through they decided to try some illegal cash withdrawals. Now they'll be whiling away their college years in Federal prison on charges of bank robbing and assault with a moving vehicle." Don looked over at Charlie with an softness in his eyes that strongly emphasized his resemblance to their mother before bottling up his emotion. "They're just damned lucky it wasn't manslaughter."

Alan stirred his tea, the ice cubes hitting the sides of the glass with loud clacks. "We're the lucky ones," he said softly.

"Hey, Charlie," Don said brightly, rapidly changing the subject. "You'll never believe what the leader, Jason Bartolli, was wearing when they picked him up."

"I'm hoping clothes?" Charlie ventured, rolling the cool side of his glass against his forehead. All this talking did nothing for the pain, but he wasn't about to complain in case Alan felt that warranted a return trip to Huntington.

"A t-shirt with that goofy picture of Einstein you have on your wall," Don pointed up at the ceiling in the general direction of Charlie's bedroom. "The one where he's sticking out his tongue and his hair is all over the place."

"At least he's got taste," Charlie closed his eyes to hide the pain in his head, and quite clearly saw Einstein wink at him. "Y'know, I think I may finally have proved Einstein wrong."

"Really?" Alan snorted in disbelief.

"Takes some hubris to claim that you've bested one of the most intelligent scientists in history, Charlie," Don scoffed. "Seems to me the relativity, gravity, all that stuff's pretty solid."

"Actually, there are many places where Einstein may not have gone far enough and modern physicists have..." Charlie nearly launched into mathematics professor mode and reined himself in. "No." He remembered not to shake his head, and waggled a hand as if erasing what he'd just written on the board. "You remember that day by day calendar you gave me for Chanukah last year, dad?"

"With the same picture on the cover," Alan agreed, drinking his tea.

"The quote for August 30th was 'One has time for either science or family but not both'," Charlie said, leaning back to look at his father and brother at once. "And I say, if you can't make time for both, then your equation is just plain wrong."

FIN


End file.
